Rent Middlemarch

Synopsis

George Eliot's masterpiece, portraying every level of society in a provincial English town, tells the story of the romantic idealist Dorothea Brooke, her misguided marriage to a dessicated scholar incapable of loving her, and the passionate love affair that ultimately brings meaning to her life. A parallel plot involves the plight of Lydgate, the equally idealistic doctor who arrives in Middlemarch hoping to bring advanced medical techniques to the village poor, but becomes ensnared by a spoiled and materialistic young woman. The novel explores the idea that the search for one's true function in life may be warped or frustrated by one's environment--but also that those obstacles may ultimately be overcome or transcended. MIDDLEMARCH, published in 1872 but set 40 years earlier, is a grand Victorian panorama--a fascinating and detailed look at English life, rich in personality types worthy of Dickens. It is also an intensely readable and gripping story, and an unexpectedly witty one, sometimes reminiscent of Jane Austen in its sharp-grained social observations. Like all Eliot's fiction, MIDDLEMARCH has a strong moral center--epitomized in the noble Dorothea--that is unrelated to formal religion and that is closely allied with a healthy skepticism about any belief system that does not include a deep and abiding respect for human frailty.

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